The Olympic ice dancers were surrounded by greenery at their Michigan wedding at the Planterra Conservatory, so it’s no surprise that their wedding cake had the same elegant, natural touch. The newlyweds opted for a four-layer vanilla cake with raspberry curd and vanilla buttercream decorated with fresh flowers and a painted edible gold crimped edge from Sweet Heather Anne bakery in Ann Arbor.
In addition to engaging customers and inspiring employees, a powerful and clear brand purpose improves alignment throughout the organization and ensures consistent messaging across touchpoints. AkzoNobel’s Dulux, one of the world’s leading paint brands, offers a case in point. In 2006, AkzoNobel was operating a heavily decentralized business structured around local markets, with each local business setting its own brand and business goals and developing its own marketing mix. Not surprisingly, the outcome was inconsistent brand positioning and results; Dulux soared in some markets and floundered in others. In 2008, Dulux’s new global brand team pursued a sweeping program to understand how people perceived the brand across markets, paint’s purpose in their lives, and the human truths that inspired people to color their environments. From China, to India, to the UK, to Brazil, a consistent theme emerged: The colors around us powerfully influence how we feel. Dulux wasn’t selling cans of paint; it was selling “tins of optimism.” This new definition of Dulux’s brand purpose led to a marketing campaign, “Let’s Color.” It enlists volunteers, which now include more than 80% of AkzoNobel employees, and donates paint (more than half a million liters so far) to revitalize run-down urban neighborhoods, from the favelas of Rio to the streets of Jodhpur. In addition to aligning the once-decentralized marketing organization, Dulux’s purpose-driven approach has expanded its share in many markets.
During the 1940s, the discipline of marketing was in transition. Interest in the functional school of thought, which was primarily concerned with mapping the functions of marketing was waning while the managerial school of thought, which focussed on the problems and challenges confronting marketers was gaining ground.[34] The concept of marketers as "mixers of ingredients," was first introduced by James Culliton, a Professor at Harvard Business School.[35] At this time theorists began to develop checklists of the elements that made up the marketing mix, however, there was little agreement as to what should be included in the list. Many scholars and practitioners relied on lengthy classifications of factors that needed to be considered to understand consumer responses.[36] Neil Borden developed a complicated model in the late 1940s, based upon at least twelve different factors.[37]

Videos. Gary Vaynerchuk is a master of content marketing using online video, just take a look at his YouTube channel. He got his start creating videos to promote his family’s wine store and through those videos and other online marketing he eventually grew it to a $45M empire. Videos and podcasts are a largely untapped form of content marketing because people think it’s expensive and hard. But with the falling cost of professional grade equipment creating high quality video and audio content is easier than ever. Amateur video content marketing has been used to sell blenders, launch new dental products, and market Hong Kong visa consulting services. What video could you throw together for your company that might change your fortunes overnight? It might be easier than you think.

Top brands excel at delivering all three manifestations of brand purpose—functional benefits, or the job the customer buys the brand to do (think of the pick-me-up Starbucks coffee provides); emotional benefits, or how it satisfies a customer’s emotional needs (drinking coffee is a social occasion); and societal benefits, such as sustainability (when coffee is sourced through fair trade). Consider the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, which defines a set of guiding principles for sustainable growth that emphasize improving health, reducing environmental impact, and enhancing livelihoods. The plan lies at the heart of all Unilever’s brand strategies, as well as its employee and operational strategies.
Read Joe Pulizzi's excellent book Epic Content Marketing. I started reading it after I wrote this post and it confirmed and expanded what I already knew about content marketing, with much more detail than I could ever go into here. Something Pulizzi emphasizes which I originally left out was the importance of focusing on producing mobile-friendly content, since smartphones are becoming the dominant way in which most of our customers access content. Also read Michael Hyatt's Platform, mentioned above. Frequent websites like those of Content Marketing Institute, Ragan, Copyblogger, Michael Hyatt, and Gary Vaynerchuk and sign up for their email newsletters. It won't take you long to become not just familiar with content marketing, but an expert.

In August and September 2017, two FTC agents posing as potential buyers recorded conversations with Sanctuary Belize Enterprises salespeople and received marketing material about the project. — Katy Mclaughlin, WSJ, "Americans Spent $100 Million on Tropical Real Estate. They Were Scammed, FTC Says.," 11 Dec. 2018 Following the social media craze known as the Tide Pod Challenge, in which teens consumed laundry detergent for fun, Tide has created new packaging that looks exactly like a box of wine. Because, marketing. — Eileen Reslen, House Beautiful, "Tide's New Eco Box Totally Resembles Boxed Wine," 12 Nov. 2018 And at the mass level, retailers like Target and J.Crew now cast non-sample-size models in marketing materials as a matter of course. — Hilary George-parkin, Glamour, "What's Holding Victoria's Secret Back From Body Diversity on the Runway?," 9 Nov. 2018 Real estate developments designed by Meier scrubbed his name from from their marketing materials. — Diana Budds, Curbed, "Richard Meier is out following sexual harassment allegations—sort of," 9 Oct. 2018 Jehv Maravilla, 21, and his friend Christian Toledo, 25, placed the sign in the Pearland McDonald’s after noticing a lack of Asian representation in the marketing materials. — Alexandra Deabler, Fox News, "McDonald's customers who hung fake poster in restaurant for 51 days get $25G checks from fast food chain," 19 Sep. 2018 In the case of Sponsored events, sponsors will be clearly identified to all on-site participants and in marketing materials tied to the relevant conference or event in language that indicates their role as underwriters. — Bloomberg, "Terms of Service," 8 July 2018 Big Agnes’ marketing material will often reference the Tiger Wall’s trail weight, but this is not a practical weight, since its performance is greatly diminished if the rear corners and vestibules are not tensioned. — Andrew Skurka, Outside Online, "Review: Big Agnes Tiger Wall Tents," 28 June 2018 Google also said that in Android 9, the Android Neural Networks API is running entirely on the Hexagon 690, said PJ Jacobowitz, a senior marketing manager at Qualcomm. — Mark Hachman, PCWorld, "Meet Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855: AI boosts, a smarter camera, mobile gaming—and bye-bye, JPEG," 5 Dec. 2018

Organizational orientation: In this sense, a firm's marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from an organization's marketing department would be used to guide the actions of other department's within the firm. As an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.
Webpages. What’s the difference between a normal webpage and a webpage that is content marketing? Consider The Beginner’s Guide to SEO from Moz, a provider of SEO related tools and resources. This resource, offered for free, has been viewed millions of times, bringing in countless customers who otherwise might never have stumbled across Moz and the services they offer. Or take a look at a case study from the design firm Teehan+Lax. Most case studies are boring. Their case studies are fascinating. That’s the difference between simply putting content on your website, and content marketing.
Filled with banana cream, topped with peanut butter buttercream, and drizzled with chocolate, these cupcakes are outrageously rich. Skip the buttercream and turn these cupcakes into "muffins." You can use the base of the cupcake batter and add chopped pecans, shredded coconut and dried fruit for a morning pick-me up. These cupcakes are small but pack in flavor and texture with the banana cream filling and peanut butter buttercream hitting both sweet and savory notes.
Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."[4] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions" of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction.[5]
Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science,[8] allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.[9]
When we asked eight global marketing executives in one organization to list their top five marketing objectives, only two goals made it onto everyone’s list. The remainder was a motley assortment of personal or local objectives. Such misalignment, our data show, increases the farther teams are from an organization’s center of power. With marketing activities ever more dispersed across global companies, that risk must be carefully managed.
McCormick, the spices and flavorings firm, emphasizes both depth and breadth in delivering on its promise to “push the art, science, and passion of flavor.” It creates a consistent experience for consumers across numerous physical and digital touchpoints, such as product packaging, branded content like cookbooks, retail stores, and even an interactive service, FlavorPrint, that learns each customer’s taste preferences and makes tailored recipe recommendations. FlavorPrint does for recipes what Netflix has done for movies; its algorithm distills each recipe into a unique flavor profile, which can be matched to a consumer’s taste-preference profile. FlavorPrint can then generate customized e-mails, shopping lists, and recipes optimized for tablets and mobile devices.
A strategic business unit (SBU) is a subsidiary within a firm, which participates within a given market/industry. The SBU would embrace the corporate strategy, and attune it to its own particular industry. For instance, an SBU may partake in the sports goods industry. It thus would ascertain how it would attain additional sales of sports goods, in order to satisfy the overall business strategy.
We divided the survey respondents into two groups, overperformers and underperformers, on the basis of their companies’ three-year revenue growth relative to their competitors’. We then compared those two groups’ strategies, structures, and capabilities. Some of what we found should come as no surprise: Companies that are sophisticated in their use of data grow faster, for instance. Nevertheless, the research shed new light on the constellation of brand attributes required for superior marketing performance and on the nature of the organizations that achieve it. It’s clear that “marketing” is no longer a discrete entity (and woe to the company whose marketing is still siloed) but now extends throughout the firm, tapping virtually every function. And while the titles, roles, and responsibilities of marketing leaders vary widely among companies and industries, the challenges they face—and what they must do to succeed—are deeply similar.
Underperforming marketers, on the other hand, underinvest in training. Their employees receive just over half a day of training a year, on average, while overperformers give people nearly two full days of tailored, practical training by external experts. At first blush, the Marketing2020 study reveals what you might expect: Marketers must leverage customer insight, imbue their brands with a brand purpose, and deliver a rich customer experience. They must connect, inspire, focus, organize, and build, as detailed here. The finding that’s striking—and should serve as both a warning and a call to arms—is that most organizations haven’t been able to put all those pieces together. Our data show that only half of even high-performing organizations excel on some of these capabilities. But that shouldn’t be discouraging; rather, it illuminates where there’s work to do. Regardless of how marketing delivers its messages in the future, the fundamental human motivations that marketers must satisfy won’t change. The challenge now is to create organizations that can truly speak to those needs.

On July 7, 1928, a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri introduced pre-cut bread using the automatic bread-slicing machine, invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder. While the bread initially failed to sell, due to its "sloppy" aesthetic, and the fact it went stale faster,[3] it later became popular. In World War II bread slicing machines were effectively banned, as the metal in them was required for wartime use. When they were requisitioned, creating 100 tonnes of metal alloy, the decision proved very unpopular with housewives.[4]